According to Angus Trumble, the painter "achieved huge public success at the
Royal Academy in May 1875 with her great military action
painting, The 28th Regiment at Quatre Bras," which she based upon
Captain William Siborne's History of the War
in France and Belgium in 1815. Two days before Waterloo
"the 28th (North Gloucestershire)
Regiment, popularly known as the Glorious Glosters. . . successfully resisted wave upon wave of French cavalry at a position they defended on the Charleroi
road, at a place called Quatre Bras. Thompson chose the
moment at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon when the gallant
28th braced itself for one massive, final charge of terrifying
Polish Lancers and cuirassier veterans led by Marshal Ney."

Thompson's preparations for the picture were
extraordinarily thorough. The 28th Regiment was known to
have formed their square in a field of rye that was especially
tall for June. so in July 1874 she went with her mother to
Henley-on-Thames, bought part of a field of rye, gathered
together some local children (whom she described as "Pre-
Raphaelite brethren") and had them trample it down so she
could make accurate drawings of the aftermath, eventually
using them in the foreground of the painting. She visited
Sanger's Circus and arranged with the grooms to have some
horses rear so she could study and draw them properly. She
recruited policemen to sit for her because unlike most
Victorian men they were clean-shaven. She had a Waterloo-
era uniform run up at the army clothing factory in Pimlico.
The design was probably taken from Colonel Charles
Hamilton Smith's authoritative Costume of the Army of the
British Empire According to the Last Regulation (1812-15)" (p. 190).

I never approached a picture with more iniquitous
prejudice against it, than I did Miss Thompson's; partly
because I have always said that no woman could paint; and
secondly because 1 thought what the public made such a
fuss about, must be good for nothing. But it is Amazon's work, this; no doubt of it, and the first fine Pre-Raphaelite picture of battle we have had; --
profoundly interesting; and showing all manner of
illustrative and realistic faculty. Of course, all that need be
said of it, on this side, must have been said twenty times
over in the journals; and it remains only for me to make my
tardy genuflection, on the trampled corn, before this Pallas
of Pall Mall. [Works, 14.306, 308]